The Right Side

by Spencer Quinn

  The woman placed the patch and the plastic box on LeAnne’s rolling tray table. “I’ll just leave this here, so you can make the choice at your convenience.” She went to the door. “Most folks end up preferring the prosthetic to the patch. They’re so remarkably lifelike nowadays. But it’s entirely up to you.” And out.

  “Lifelike,” LeAnne said. “You hear that shit?”

  Marci still lay the way she’d been lying, tucked in deep and tight, face to the wall. “Who didn’t?”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “No problem,” Marci said.

  Which was bullshit. Marci had problems, all right, although nowhere near as many as . . . as whatever her name was, the roommate before. Or was she getting the roommate before mixed up with the roommate in Germany? Had there even been a German roommate? She searched her memory for something German, found only a wastebasket full of bloody bandages. And some blood that had leaked out of the bottom of the wastebasket and pooled on a black-and-white-squared floor. Kind of the cherry on top of the memory, in reverse. But here in Bethesda the cherry blossoms were gearing up once more.

  “Ignorant bastards,” LeAnne said.

  “The prosthetics people?” Marci said, rolling onto her back and sitting up.

  LeAnne had actually been talking about the cherry blossoms, but to say so would be an out-and-out admission of craziness. “Nothing,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  Marci gave her a funny look. Was it just because she wasn’t wearing the patch? LeAnne didn’t know. And could you even blame Marci for that? Meanwhile, Marci pushed the covers aside and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Over the edge for one, but not the other, which came to a lumpy, thickly dressed end a few inches above where the knee would have been. She reached for her crutches, leaning against the wall by the head of the bed, grabbing one, no problem, but knocking the other to the floor. It clattered around for what seemed like an impossibly long and noisy time. By now LeAnne had some expertise in these matters and knew not to help her. She kept her mouth shut and looked no place until Marci got everything squared away. Marci stood up with a grunt, leaning on the crutches.

  “PT?” LeAnne said.

  Marci nodded and made her way out of the room.

  “You were right about the cherry blossoms,” LeAnne called after her.

  Marci, now in the hall, paused. LeAnne sensed that Marci had a notion to give her the finger just then, but with the crutches it was all too complicated. Marci moved on. In the hospital you got to see those who had lots of crutching experience and those who did not. Marci was still a newbie. LeAnne closed the door.

  Theirs was a good room, not big, but it had its own bathroom. LeAnne went to the sink, splashed cold water on her face, and looked in the mirror. Christ, help me.

  “Nothing to do with talent,” Mr. Iglesias said. Mr. Iglesias had been LeAnne’s gymnastics coach forever, starting when she was two years old. He was a little guy with big muscles and a bouncy walk, wore a thick gold cross around his neck, and always switched to Spanish when he was really pleased with how she or any of the girls had done. “LeAnne’s got tons of talent, plus she’s a quick learner and a hard worker. The problem is . . . well, look at her.”

  “What about her?” said Mom and Daddy, not looking at LeAnne but keeping their eyes on Mr. Iglesias. This was outside the high school after the central Arizona club championships. LeAnne had placed eighth overall. She’d been fourth the year before. Kind of a strange moment, Mom and Daddy saying the same thing at the same time. By now, halfway through ninth grade, Mom and Daddy were divorced, Daddy living in the old house, Mom in Scottsdale, and LeAnne going back and forth but mostly living with Daddy, on account of Alex, Mom’s new husband, already had three kids of his own, and there were no more bedrooms. LeAnne was cool with that. She didn’t much care for Alex—he was hardly a man at all, compared to Daddy—and the three kids were the spoiled rich kind who lived to shop and spent most of their time indoors.

  “I wish you’d stop with this rich business,” Mom said. “Alex is a partner in a suburban accounting office. That’s not rich.” But Mom now looked rich, had rich-style hair and rich-style skin—especially her forehead, smooth as polished stone—although she still drove the same minivan and had kept her dental hygienist job.

  “That right there, hanging on to the job,” Daddy said, one night when he’d maybe had too many, “tells me she’s gonna come crawling back someday. Good luck with that.”

  “Daddy. Please.”

  Unpleasant, but not derailing. LeAnne had no complaints. She still got on fine with both her parents, separately, had lots of friends, and was very busy with school, practices, meets. One small thing: her mom no longer baked those gingerbread men LeAnne liked, gingerbread men with mint-green eyes. Sometimes she missed them.

  “Eleven’s the cutoff point,” said Tasha, her best friend on the team. “If your parents get divorced before you’re eleven, that can be bad. After that the circuits in your brain are harder and all the upset really doesn’t penetrate.”

  “Yeah?” said LeAnne, who’d been twelve at the time of the split. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I didn’t hear it. I read it. In fact, I researched the whole subject.”

  “Your parents are getting divorced?”

  “No. Well, who knows, right?”

  Which started LeAnne laughing, even though the joke was hard to explain. Tasha joined in. LeAnne’s laugh was like that, a party invite, according to Tasha. As the laughter faded, Tasha said, “I looked it up on account of you, naturally.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Got your back,” Tasha said.

  They’d bumped fists, Tasha punching up and LeAnne down, Tasha still so small. In all their competition over the years, Tasha only beat LeAnne in LeAnne’s very last meet, that statewide club championship held at the high school, Tasha coming third.

  “What about her?” Mr. Iglesias repeated, looking surprised. “Well, she’s grown quite a bit in the past year. You must’ve noticed.”

  “So what?” Daddy said. “She’s in great shape.”

  “And,” Mom said, “she—”

  “I’ll handle this, if you don’t mind,” Daddy said.

  LeAnne backed away a little. Over on the other side of the parking lot, Tasha was getting big hugs from her parents, neither of them much bigger than Tasha. Tasha’s mom was bouncing on her tiptoes, like she was barely stopping herself from jumping up and down. LeAnne smiled.

  “Whoa,” said Mr. Iglesias, raising his hand palm up. “Of course, she’s in great shape—the strongest girl who’s ever come through the program. That’s not the point. The point is she’s . . . well, she’s grown so much this year, hair under five ten at last measurement. Look around. How many five-foot-ten gymnasts do you see performing at the top level?”

  The answer was none, a fact LeAnne had been trying not to face for some time. Because: What comes after that? She loved gymnastics, but not as a hobby. It was more like she wanted to go pro, even though there was no going pro in gymnastics, with the exception of one woman sometimes getting on the Wheaties box in Olympic years.

  “Well,” said Mom, “isn’t there always a first time?”

  Normally, a comment like that, especially from Mom, would trigger some sarcastic expression on Daddy’s face, but now he said, “Right. There’s always a first time. That’s basic.”

  “Can’t deny it,” said Mr. Iglesias. “Tell you what. No reason to rush into anything. Take time to think things over. But while you’re thinking, here’s an idea you might want to add to the mix.” He took a rolled-up magazine from his back pocket and opened it to a two-page spread.

  “What’s this?” Daddy said.

  “Last year’s top three finishers,” said Mr. Iglesias. “NCAA national women’s pole vault. Notice anything?”

  They all nodded, Mom, Daddy, LeAnne. It was pretty obvious.

  “Same size, same body type,” said Mr. Iglesia
s. “Plus LeAnne’s got upper-body strength off the charts, runs like a deer, and has the timing and body control you only get from gymnastics.” He handed LeAnne the magazine. “Pole vault,” he said, and patted her shoulder. “You’re gonna kill.”

  The plastic box was lined in velvet and had three small compartments, as though made for dividing up jewelry: rings, necklaces, earrings. Like jewelry, what lay inside was brightly colored and shiny, and, also like jewelry, totally decorative.

  “My jewelry box,” LeAnne said aloud, looking into the mirror again. Looking with her left eye, never her best, although still better than 20/20. So, no complaints on that score. But here was the problem with having just the one. With two eyes, the unknown snuck up on you from behind your back. With only the one, the unknown covered more ground, opening up new firing angles from the side. Three dark quadrants: she felt the thinness of her margin of safety at all times. Except when she was asleep. In her dreams she saw the way she used to, all her nightmares on the wide screen.

  Tears welled up in her left eye. Why say left eye? Just plain fucking eye! And tears: that was despicable. LeAnne gave her head a furious shake, removed a glossy little booklet from the box, opened it: Instructions.

  LeAnne read the instructions twice, absorbing nothing. There were also visuals, featuring a pretty woman who looked to be about LeAnne’s age, resembled her in some ways—blue-eyed (also left only), dark-haired, clear-skinned. Clear-skinned in the model’s case also included the surroundings of the right eye, which was far from true in LeAnne’s case. Once she’d seen a picture of a crater on the moon, a dark pit with what looked like silvery rays branching out from it across the lunar surface, like frozen runoff from an impact. LeAnne’s runoff rays—forehead, temple, cheek—were red, not silver, but all the nurses said that the redness would fade, especially if she used an aloe-based cream not supplied by the VA but easily found on the internet.

  She closed the plastic box and put on the patch. It was nice and big.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Her mouth was dry. And the insides of her nose, and her sinuses, and her whole head: dry, dry, dry. This ugly desert did that, although the beautiful one back home did not. But like all deserts, it was good for carrying sound. She could hear the faraway pounding of 155s and hoped to God they were hitting something that counted in the plus column. God was on the side of . . . something or other. She tried to remember, and while that was going on, the barrage came much closer, like she was in the target zone. LeAnne opened her eyes.

  Eye.

  It all came back to her, in a rush, a flood, a locomotive off the rails. “Fuck.” Would she have to endure this every time she woke up for the rest of her goddamn life? Why couldn’t she hold on to the memory every night, spare herself from the daily rewounding? What was wrong with her? She realized that someone was knocking on the door. She glanced over at Marci’s bed. Empty. Also, the room was full of the kind of light you didn’t see first thing in the morning.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Stallings,” said a man. “Captain Gerald, G-2.”

  LeAnne took her water bottle from the bedside table and drained it. She remembered where God was: on the side of the big battalions. Meaning her mind wasn’t totally fried. She sat up.

  “May I come in?”

  She searched around for the patch, which had slipped off during her sleep, found it under the pillow, got it in place.

  “If you’re looking for Marci, she’s not here.”

  The door opened and in came a soft-faced man in blue, two silver bars on his lapel. He looked her way, then came to attention and saluted, which was very weird, captains not routinely initiating salutes with sergeants, to say nothing of sergeants out of uniform, in fact in pajamas.

  “No,” he said, lowering his hand to his side, “I’m looking for you.”

  LeAnne wondered about returning his salute. She was still in the service, although not on active duty—unless she’d missed something. That thought—her missing something—made her laugh.

  Captain Stallings smiled. “Let me in on the joke,” he said.

  “I wish,” said LeAnne.

  Stallings’s smile wavered a bit but didn’t completely fade. “I’m glad to see you in good . . . in relatively good spirits.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “We haven’t met before? Because my memory’s not the sharpest these days.”

  “This is our very first get-together, right here and now.”

  LeAnne gazed at Stallings, wondered where she was going with this. “Then,” she said, her mind snatching at bits from the stream of conversation, “how can you say anything about my spirits?”

  And still, his smile did not quite vanish. “I can’t. My mistake. But I am interested in how you’re doing, no mistake about that.” He glanced at the footstool under the rolling tray table. “Mind if I sit down?”

  LeAnne shrugged.

  Captain Stallings pulled up the stool and sat down with his briefcase, supple brown leather with brass fittings, on his lap.

  “G-2?” LeAnne said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Meaning intelligence.”

  “Correct.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We’ll get to that,” Stallings said. “As long as you’re feeling up to it.” He had a soft voice to go along with that soft face, kind of refreshing considering the scarcity of soft voices in her line of work. But his eyes weren’t soft. Not hard, either, more like watchful. “Are you in pain?” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “Glad to hear that. Do, um, they have you on a lot of medication?”

  “Nope.”

  He nodded in an agreeable way, his eyes growing more watchful at the same time. She’d had just about enough of him.

  “We’re trying to get a handle on the events of January seventeenth,” Stallings said.

  January seventeenth? And today was . . . ?

  “The date of that last mission,” Stallings said. “Your last mission.” He checked the screen of his phone. “Designated Operation Midnight Special, I believe. If you don’t want to talk about it, just say.”

  “That’s not it,” LeAnne said. “But since I don’t remember a thing, what can I tell you?” That closed the door on that, good and hard! LeAnne enjoyed a moment of triumph. After it passed—so quickly—all she wanted to do was crawl back into the bed, way down deep.

  “Understood,” said Stallings. “Where did that designation come from, by the way?”

  What was this? He hadn’t noticed that the door was closed, good and hard? If that was the best intelligence could do, they were fucked. Which she already knew.

  “In other words,” Stallings went on, “who chose it?”

  Watchful eyes, beyond doubt. “Captain Cray,” she said. She kept her voice perfectly steady, or just about.

  “The mission commander?”

  LeAnne nodded, a perfectly businesslike type of nod.

  “Did it have any particular meaning, Midnight Special?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I like it,” Stallings said.

  “You like the name of the operation?”

  “I do.” He put his phone away. “How about we backtrack to the last memory you have of that night?”

  “I told you—I don’t remember anything.”

  “Understood,” said Stallings again. The word had to mean something different to him, because he pressed on. “How about the ride into the target area—do you have any recollection of that?”

  “Full moon,” LeAnne said.

  “Yeah?” Stallings opened the briefcase, rummaged around inside, leafed through some printouts. “First time that’s come up.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s a bit of a surprise, that’s all. No mention of it in any of the reports or interviews.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Not a question of belief. It’s a checkabl
e fact.” He took out his phone, busied himself with it for a moment or two, then nodded. “Rose at 7:43 p.m. local time, January seventeenth, set at 2:19 the following morning.” Stallings pulled the stool in a bit closer. “Full moon. What else?”

  “I don’t like a full moon.”

  “Why is that?”

  “On a mission,” she said, possibly snapping at him. “I don’t like a full moon on a mission—might as well go in with a marching band.” But what really bothered her was how he’d moved in closer. Just an inch or two, but she felt his presence way more strongly and wanted him gone. Meanwhile, he was nodding in an affirmative and supportive sort of way that she found maddening.

  “I didn’t,” LeAnne corrected herself. “I didn’t like a full moon on a mission.”

  “Understood. Did you share that thought with the commanding officer?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “No? How does it work?”

  “Have you been in combat?”

  “I have not.”

  Silence fell, a hospital-type silence meaning murmurs, beeps, distant sirens. LeAnne remembered another full moon and how she’d pole vaulted under its light, all by herself, a night of practice where her left wrist had suddenly figured out how to get involved, opening the door to the big time.

  No trace of Captain Stallings’s smile remained. LeAnne felt like she was getting somewhere. Did that make sense? She thought so.

  “I’d like to show you some pictures,” he said. “See if you can ID any of these subjects.”

  LeAnne shrugged.

  Stallings reached into the briefcase again and withdrew a wad of five-by-seven photos that he held up for her inspection one at a time. First came a bunch of Afghan men, some in tribal outfits, a few dressed western-style, and one or two in Afghan army camos.

  “No,” said LeAnne. “No, no, no, no, and no.”

  “Sure about this one?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Just double-checking.” Stallings started to return the photo to the stack. LeAnne grabbed his wrist. A bony wrist and cold, meaning she was hot. His eyes opened wide, like he was shocked. For a moment, she was in touch with her old strength.